


In Every Universe You Are My Symphony

by RunWithWolves



Series: 25 Days of Sweetheart [25]
Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Music, it's all here, let's bring it home cupcakes, my 100th carmilla story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-18
Updated: 2017-11-18
Packaged: 2019-02-03 19:36:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12754794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RunWithWolves/pseuds/RunWithWolves
Summary: When she died, Carmilla lost the ability to hear her soul music. She lost the song that played in her head and was made of everything she was; she lost the ability to hear the responding song of anyone who fell in love with her. When Elle learns the truth, she calls Carmilla a monster. Unlovable and unloved.Even as Elle tries to warn Laura to stay away from the monster, Laura and her acoustic guitar soul music might have a slightly different opinion. She just has to figure out where the soft violin music filling her head is actually coming from.To save Carmilla, she might have to figure it out more than once.Thank you for 100 Carmilla stories.





	In Every Universe You Are My Symphony

**Author's Note:**

> Half an hour to spare and never let me write this many words in two days again.  
> STORY 100 IS HERE. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
> 
> I spent a lot of time thinking about what fanfic means and why we read it and this poured out. I can only hope it does everything justice.

Carmilla danced to the music in her head and didn’t realize that it would be the last time she would ever hear it. She smiled, sweeping her long dress along as she took the hand of the next suitor in the ballroom. Perhaps his would be the song to match her own; the music she would hear back. She laughed as they tried to dance, clumsily tripping over what were clearly two very different rhythms. With a courtesy, she thanked him for trying and made her way over to where the ladies of the party were watching. A smirk on her lips as she held out her hand to the most blushing of the bunch.

Even if dancing was a challenge when the music lived only in your head, there was nothing that the Countess Karnstein enjoyed more than a ball. One in honour of her 18th birthday was even better. 

No musicians required when everyone was dancing to what mattered most.

Her music was a violin melody; the sweeping decadence of a single instrument rolling over itself in a beautiful four four time that made Carmilla close her eyes and smile so as just hear it a little better. The piece climbed up only to sink down so that it could climb again. The melody filtering through again and again. Vibrato pouring through the crisp notes. The piece gained in volume as it went, climbing towards a triumphant end but, at the last second, slipping into softness. Quiet. Calm and gentle as the strings were softly caressed.

Carmilla loved it. 

Every person had a song, was born with a piece of music in their hearts that was everything they were. All they had to do was look inward and the piece would soar through their head. 

A little piece of their soul made tangible. For their own ears alone.

With one exception. 

When you fell in love, the other person would hear your song. They’d be able to follow it to find their way to you and call it up on demand. As Carmilla took another turn around the ballroom, she smiled at the girl in her arms whose song nearly seemed to match. The rumours said that your true love’s soul song would be perfectly in tune with your own, weaving together into something beautiful. 

This girl was close but the beat wasn’t perfect. 

Carmilla thanked her for the dance with a soft kiss to her cheek and turned away, even her footsteps following the rhythm of her violin solo. 

The music was still playing as she died. As her eyes went wide at the knife buried deep in her chest. The last note Carmilla Karnstein ever heard from her soul was a soft b flat. The note signifying the opening line of the first decent in her song. Before she could hear it, her song fell away and the world went back.

#

When her eyes opened again, fangs already out as her new mother stood over the newfound vampire, the song was nowhere to be found. Carmilla strained for it, reaching into herself to try and find the notes to pull them forward. She tried time and time again.

But nothing ever came. 

“Please,” Maman scoffed, “You’re my glittering girl. My little monster. You’re better than all that. You’re dead, darling.” She took Carmilla’s chin, appraising her, “The dead don’t have souls to bother with all that music nonsense.”

And Carmilla’s heart broke.

Not an inch of it showed on her face as she stared up at Maman and nodded. 

#

Carmilla continued to try. She pulled on the place where the music had once lived, tugging in the dead of night after waking from nightmares of murder and family. Her lungs heaved for air she didn’t need. White nightgown askew as Carmilla clasped onto her pillow and pulled it into her lap to bury her face in its folds. She pulled and tugged and begged the universe.

The music never came and she was left to the sound of her own tears. 

She tried again in daylight, dressed in her finest as Maman took her to the greatest places that Europe could offer. Fine castles and art and history beyond her wildest dreams. Staring at the beauty of the world, in the silence of contemplative spaces, Carmilla pulled. She tried to summon forth those first notes. That initial rise. The soft start of slow notes rising between the spaces. 

The notes stayed locked away.

It became an unconscious movement, a gesture. A pull on whatever was left of her in the hope that she’d be able to find something of the human beneath the monster. 

She never did. 

That habit became so ingrained that Carmilla realized she was trying to tug on the truest places of herself while her face was covered in blood, a stranger falling from her hands to the street with blood pouring down her neck. She recoiled, fleeing the scene.

She stared at the face in the mirror. Bloody. Fangs on display. Eyes curled black as the thumping of a hundred hearts called to her. Hunter. Animal. 

Monster. 

She threw up in the sink. 

Two days later, Carmilla bought a violin. She played until her fingers were raw, determined to learn the complicated instrument. Locked in a frenzy, she did nothing else for a month. Nothing else until the old familiar piece poured from her fingers as best she could remember it. When she thought she had it, she went to her dresser and pulled out an old dress from the back. A gift for a Countess at a ball on her 18th birthday. 

So the Countess stood. Picked up the violin. Played.

Carmilla played the music straight through once, letting the music fall through her as it rose and fell. Her fingers trembled on the vibrato and her bow hand faltered as she reached the soft end. But she played it through. 

Played it through with tears wetting her cheeks and an ache in her gums as she fought to keep them hidden. One last time. One last memory.

As the last note lingered, she slowly lowered the violin. Then, with still wet cheeks, she tore the instrument apart with hands that could never be human. 

Never to be heard again. Her fangs slipped out. She dried her face on the rags of the dress.

Monsters don’t get music.

The violin and dress were left scattered on the floor.

#

Her mother made of game of catching girls for her trap and Carmilla was the best at playing it. The best at capturing girls and handing them over to her mother to do with as she pleased. It didn’t matter that she had no music; the right smile and the touch of a hand could distract from even that. 

Until Elle.

Elle was the first girl to ever ask after Carmilla’s melody. Carmilla’s head jerked up from where she was reading by the fireplace, eyes finding Elle watching her from where they sat next to each other. Merely acquaintances. 

“I beg your pardon?” Carmilla asked.

Elle ducked her head, her own book closed, “I apologize if it’s too forward,” Elle said, “But I’ve never heard a song that’s not my own and I’m certainly not going to ask my Papa or any of gentleman what theirs sounds like. I thought that perhaps.” She paused, eyes skimming Carmilla, “you walk with a rhythm that reminds me of my own.” Elle confessed, “and I was intrigued at the possibility.”

It had been a simple matter to learn to match her own steps with the steps of the girls she was targeting. Too often, with the song in their head, people walked to their own beat. Easy to copy. This was her moment. Carmilla shifted, turning towards Elle, “The pianoforte,” she lied, “Heavy in chords with something that emotes softly above it. Very triumphant and a major chord progression. I often,” Carmilla smiled to herself, “find myself smiling just thinking about it.”

A twinge of her old violin melody ran through her memory and she squashed it before her face could fall. It did no good to remember what was gone.

Elle’s eyes were wide. Smiling. Excited. “Mine is an organ and I’ve always found it to resemble the galloping of my horse, it’s why I love riding so much.” Elle continued, baring the deepest explanation for her soul to Carmilla and Carmilla almost raced to stop her. The honesty for her lies curling something in her gut. 

But Elle was looking at her with eyes that shone and when she reached out, grabbing Carmilla’s hand in her eagerness to tell her tale to someone, Carmilla couldn’t pull away. She couldn’t pull away from the first honest touch she’d felt in decades. Not someone who wanted anything more from her than to listen. To explain. To reveal who they were. 

She let her fingers twine with Elle’s and listened to her describe her song until the sun went down. 

When it set, Carmilla had convinced herself that if she’d been human, she would have heard Elle’s song. Holding tightly to her hand and falling into footstep as easily as if the rhythm had been her own. Monsters may not have had soul music. 

But perhaps she could borrow some.

#

She never did hear Ell’s song. With tickets for a boat to America in her bag, tickets that would get Ell away from whatever her mother had planned, Carmilla raced into Elle’s room with excitement on her face. They could get away. They could be free. They could be together. 

Her plan spilled from her tongue as she burst into the room, uncaring that her eyes were wide with excitement as she spoke of how they could run away together. Be together. 

Then Elle turned and Carmilla froze; her face dark and drawn instead of the excitement that Carmilla had expected. 

“Was any of it real?” Elle’s whisper was a hiss, “Was a single note of it true or did you fake it all?”

“What?” Carmilla stuttered the word, “Elle, what are you talking-”

Elle cut her off, “I met a woman in town today. She was saying some strange things about you.” The usual warmth in her eyes was gone, cut off with anger and a hint of fear that broke Carmilla’s heart all over again. Then she noticed the knife in her hand, watched Elle slice her palm open and hold the blood towards Carmilla.

Carmilla blanched, unfreezing to turn away. Look down. Look away. Cover her mouth with her hand least Elle see the fangs that burst from her gums without her permission at the smell of fresh blood. The Monster inside. The one she’d tried so hard to keep hidden.

She could hold it back. She could. She could be more than a monster.

“Look at me, Carmilla,” Elle demanded, “Why won’t you look at me.”

Carmilla glanced up. Pushing. Forcing. Hoping. Trying to keep the Monster inside as she tried to pull on her soul music like she hadn’t in decades. Maybe it was still there. Maybe she wasn’t all a monster. But as soon as she saw the blood, the monster reared its head and she hissed. Fangs bared. 

Recoiling immediately, Carmilla gasped in fear. She covered her face with her hand again.

It was too late. Elle had seen. The horror reflected in her eyes, “You’re a monster.”

“Elle,” Carmilla tried, “Please.”

It was hard to speak around the fangs. Words wouldn’t do anything anyway. She had to prove it. Show Elle. Proved that she loved her and that there was something human still inside her. That she wasn’t all monster. That she was worth loving. 

That she was worth even a single note of melody in return. 

Carmilla pulled. She pulled with everything she had on the place where her soul music had lived. Clawing and tugging and screaming and begging. Not a single note welled up.

She really was a monster. 

Monsters shouldn’t exist. She deserved every punishment. So, when her mother demanded Carmilla’s obedience for her attempted betrayal - her attempt to run away with Elle. Carmilla hadn’t even complained. Hadn’t objected. Hadn’t even tried to fight. 

She’d stepped into the coffin with watery eyes and trembling hands but didn’t run away. Heart broken. Soul gone. 

Carmilla let them drown her in blood. 

#

There was no music for 70 years as she lay buried in the coffin.

Monsters didn’t deserve music anyway.

#

When she emerged, a fluke of history that a war freed her from her cage, Carmilla fled to Paris. Her sister letting her stay in her mansion while she recovered. So much to learn and catch up on. Seventy years missed. 

She hoped Elle had enjoyed every one of them with whomever could truly hear her music.

Until Mattie let something slip a few months into her stay, refusing to hide anything from her baby sister when asked directly, and Carmilla had learned the truth. 

Her mother had slaughtered Elle mere moments after Carmilla had been locked away. Elle had barely lived a day of those seventy years. Mattie looked on in trepidation but Carmilla couldn’t find herself reacting. She’d nodded. Then gotten up and made her way to the ballroom.

An old violin of Mattie’s in amidst the other unplayed instruments. 

She picked it up. Face blank. 

The instrument was familiar in her hands and still tucked nicely under her chin. Her fingers went to find their strings and froze. Froze. Carmilla’s eyes went wide as she stood there. A silent statue for hours as she hovered over the strings. 

She knew how to play a G. An A. B flat and every other note. 

But. 

She couldn’t remember the melody. Carmilla’s hand slipped and the violin crashed to the floor as she finally acknowledged the truth. She couldn’t remember a single note of her soul music. Not the rhythm or the pattern or the rise and fall. It was gone. Every note of it nothing but a lingering impression in the back of her head. A phantom of the girl she had once been.

Elle was dead - the last thing she’d done was call her a monster. Her mother had killed her. Carmilla’s soul music was gone, nothing left of the girl she’d been. 

Only monster remained. 

Her fangs flashed. She stepped over the fallen instrument.

Then that’s what she’d be. 

#

Carmilla was basically a monster. Laura gritted her teeth and whirled on her roommate as she snickered to herself after chasing off two girls who were part of Laura’s investigation, “Why would you even do that!” she shouted, “Those were two girls who had something traumatic happen to them and all you can do is make bad jokes?”

Rolling her eyes, Carmilla waved Laura off, “Oh come on, trebleclef.” Laura’s fists clenched a little tighter at the nickname, “Do you really think you were going to get any information out of them? Please. I did you a favour. Those two beat to their own drum and nobody’s going to be able to match them anyway. Forget about it.”

“Someone is going around, literally stealing the music right out of people’s souls and you want me to just forget about it?” Laura stood, kicking aside a pile of clothes that Carmilla had left on the ground, “What is your literal problem? Are you trying to be the worst person ever? Is your music made entirely of, oh I don’t know, creepy organ music and the sound of people crying?”

“If only I were so lucky,” Carmilla drawled and Laura threw her hands in the air, fake strangling nothing as Carmilla rolled out of bed and stole one of Laura’s cookies from the cupboard.

She looked Laura straight in the eye as she ate it.

Laura took a deep breath, “You know, you try and act like you’re all broody and disaffected. Like nothing can touch you. But really? You’re just miserable and alone.”

Carmilla’s body tightened. Drew itself in and up in a hundred little ways that made Laura’s fingers twitch for some kind of weapon. “Oh, and what about you?” Her eyes bore down on Laura. Laura steeled her back, refusing to flinch, “Do you know anything that you didn’t know yesterday? Have you gotten anywhere in your investigation?” Carmila practically prowled forward, “Face it cutie. You’re not doing a note of good. Those girls will be fine without their music and all you’re doing is getting yourself put in the crosshairs. All this talk of music and melodies - it means nothing in the grand scheme of things. You have no idea what it takes to survive in a world where-”

Carmilla shook her head, cutting herself off, “You know what, the sooner you stop playing mistro the better off you’ll be.”

Laura just stared at her, unable to say anything as Carmilla lifted her chin, triumphant, and dropped back onto her bed. Laura’s mouth opened. Closed. Uncertain as to if this fight with Carmilla was even worth it. Just as the thought crossed her mind, she tugged reflexively on her music. 

The guitar rolled over her. Acoustic and quiet as the fast series of notes skipped past each other like a waterfall, the picking of a guitar string over gentle strums. The speed fast and unceasing as the guitar built chords, making and breaking patterns until they blended together into a cohesive whole. Laura took a deep breath just as the soul music reached her favourite part, the middle portion. The part where the music seemed to finally breath, the melody staying the same but pulled out long and slow. Something deeper underneath the quick notes. 

“No,” she said, as the music swirled under her. Definite. Confident.

“What?” Carmilla snapped.

“No,” Laura repeated. The music seemed to swell with her, “I’m not just going to give up. Maybe you’re right, maybe I don’t know anything about how the world works or what soul music means. But,” the music filled her head, picking up speed again, “I know what it feels like. Maybe the world doesn’t work the way that I thought it would but I know that everyone deserves to have their music heard. Felt. Even if it’s just only by themselves. No soul music, no piece of who someone is, should fall on deaf ears. So I’m going to help those girls to get to their music back. Get it heard again. Because that’s what they deserve. That’s what I deserve. Heck,” she looked right at Carmilla, “That’s even what you deserve.”

She almost wished Carmilla could hear her music, hear the way it built and swelled and refused to let the world go. Refused to believe that a simple, quiet acoustic guitar couldn’t be loud and full and important. Because her own song was thundering through her head as Carmilla just stared at her. 

The music was cut off when alarm bells went off across the school and Laura was forced to race down the stairwell to make the mandatory all students emergency meeting. No music in her head as she ran. 

Except. 

She paused on the landing of the second floor, frowning. Laura shook her head. For a second there, just for a second, she’d thought she’d heard the gentle cadence of a violin. A simple five note melody. Trying to block out the alarm, she listened. 

But there was nothing there.

Shaking her head a second time to clear it, Laura ran on.

#

Carmilla was almost being cordial and Laura would have spent more time investigating if it hadn’t been for the creepy dreams that haunted her every night. She woke up gasping, straining to turn on the light before the things that lurked in the dark could get her. 

The light flicked on and she almost jumped out of her skin at the figure in the corner.

“Oh,” her heart rate slowed, “It’s just you.”

Carmilla unfurled herself from the window to sit on her own bed, “You’re jumpy tonight, trebleclef.”

“Bad dreams,” Laura admitted. She ran her fingers through her hair, still trying to gather herself.

“What kind of dreams?”

Carmilla so rarely push for interaction that Laura could only frown at her. All she found was Carmilla waiting, perched on the edge of her bed with a small twitch in her fingers. She raised an eyebrow, willing to hold the silence until Laura gave her something. Outside, the stars twinkled through the window Carmilla had abandoned. 

Her soul music came through quietly as Laura tried to push away the bad feelings, “There was a girl,” she said at last, “dressed in all white and she was telling me not to go into the music because the music was bad. That it would steal me away. That it was all a lie.”

Carmilla’s breathing slowed. 

“Except,” Laura shook her head, “it wasn’t even the dream that was so bad even if it was really really creepy. It was the music that was the worst part.”

“An organ.” Carmilla’s words slipped out on a exhale.

Laura frowned, “Yes. No. Not exactly. It was,” her hands twisted in the blanket, trying to find the right words, “twisted.” She settled on, “there was something wrong with it. Like, it felt familiar but like someone had twisted it over time and put something sinister on top. Covered it in something oily. It was an organ. I think.” She shook her head, “but it was playing the wrong thing? Like the wrong melody. Or the melody was being played by the wrong thing and all slowed down and creepy.”

“I don’t know.” Laura rubbed her arms, trying to calm the goosebumps, “but something was wrong with it.”

“And there was a girl?” Carmilla prompted. Her eyes almost seemed to glow in the moonlight, something in them locking onto Laura and refusing to let go. 

Laura nodded, “She was angry and trying to warn me about something. I assume the blood, she was covered in it. Head to toe. White dress soaked through in it with a cut down the center of her hand that wouldn’t stop bleeding.”

Carmilla looked down at her feet, hands fisted at her sides. Laura stayed quiet, calming her breathing as the dream slowly faded away. The moon glowed softly on the side of Carmilla’s face, making her look younger than she was. From outside, she could hear the gentle movement of trees in the wind and bats fluttering across campus.

The campus had a weirdly high bat population. 

“She was,” Carmilla’s words were soft. Broken, “she was angry? Still?”

Laura didn’t know what to say, “I. Just. I don’t know. Maybe? Definitely afraid of something.”

It looked as though Carmilla had the weight of the world on her shoulder and, in the dark, Laura found it was easy to forget how annoying she’d been. “Did you,” Laura asked softly, “dream about her too? That you know about her and the organ?”

“No.” Carmilla shook her head, “No. I’ve never dreamed about her.”

“But the other girls, the ones you chased off,” Laura grabbed her pillow and pulled it tight to her chest, “they spoke of creepy dreams just like this, didn’t they?”

Carmilla sighed and looked up, “She has a history of haunting the campus, shows up in dreams all across the centuries since the school started. I wouldn’t put too much stock in it. It’s just a dream. This is Silas. Ghosts are par for the course.”

“Right.” Laura agreed. But she couldn’t stop staring at Carmilla. The way she seemed drawn into herself. Shoulders small. Hands clenched. Face glowing with moonlight and showing Laura just enough to make her wonder if Carmilla was telling her the whole truth. 

There had to be something behind a face that sad. A face so sad that it made something in Laura ache.

She threw the pillow onto Carmilla’s lap, “Here.”

Carmilla’s head jerked up, surprised

“We both know you’re just going to steal it anyway,” Laura said, “Might as well give you a headstart. You should actually get some sleep you know. One of us should have good dreams.”

Slowly, Carmilla put it on her bed and laid down.

Laura followed suit, staring up at the ceiling.

“Thank you.” The words came soft.

Laura smiled into her second pillow, “You’re welcome, Carmilla.”

She hadn’t thought that she would get back to sleep that night, the nightmare still roving through her head, but Laura found herself drifting off. A violin running through her head. Soft. Hesitant. Sleepy.

And a little bit afraid.

A much better dream. 

#

The room was empty the next night; Carmilla nowhere to be found. It wasn’t unusual but as Laura climbed into bed, she found herself watching the door. Trying to convince herself that she wasn’t hoping her roommate would come home. 

She got ready as slowly as possible and still, Carmilla didn’t return. 

So Laura forced herself into bed, pulling the blanket up to her chin and shutting her eyes. 

Every time, just as she found the edge of sleep, her brain jerked. Fear kicking in as it reminded her of the dreams that would await the moment she actually fell asleep. So, desperately, Laura turned to the one thing that had helped. 

The lingering phantom of the violin melody. 

She let it climb through her head but ground her teeth in frustration when the melody refused to come. Like a thought she couldn’t quite reach or a memory out of focus. She wasn’t sleeping anyway. Laura bounded out of bed, casting away the nightmares and grabbed the beat-up acoustic she kept in the closet. 

Her mother’s initials on the neck.

Laura didn’t know how to play the violin but she could try this. So, she chased the elusive melody until the sun rose and she went off to class. Never quite getting it. She passed Carmilla in the hallway, nodding as she scurried away.

#

She could feel Carmilla in the room hovering over her shoulder and making noises that Laura was pretty sure meant that Carmilla was stealing her hot chocolate again. Still, Laura’s eyes stayed glued to her screen. An 18 hour work day’s worth of ghost research covering her dozens of open tabs.

“Shouldn’t you be in class?” Carmilla asked.

Laura kept her eyes on the screen, grabbing a cookie, “I skipped. I’m sick.”

She could hear the skip of surprise as Carmilla processed that. Then, “Yeah. You do look like crap.”

How sweet. Seemed the kindness was over.

“I’m headed out to a talk on Goete,” Carmilla continued, “Won’t be back until late.”

Laura neary jumped in surprise when a mug of hot chocolate was shoved onto the desk next to her. She glanced up at Carmilla but she wasn’t even looking at Laura, instead, her eyes were fixed on the screen. “Is that for me?” Laura asked, staring at the hot chocolate.

Instead, Carmilla’s words came sharp, “What are you working on here?”

“Oh,” Laura curled her hand around the hot chocolate before Carmilla could take it away, “I’m researching the girl from my dreams? Turns out that you were right. She shows up all over Silas history.”

Carmilla’s hand curled around the back of her chair, “You shouldn’t be digging into this.”

Laura rolled her eyes, “Because me having a creepy dream that apparently lots of different girls, girls who have all gone missing, had isn’t something worth looking into? Please. There’s a mystery here and I’m going to solve it. Even if no-one will help me.”

“Are you even listening to yourself?” Carmilla asked, “You just said that everyone involved with this goes missing? And you want to dig deeper into it? Do you have a death wish trebleclef or are you just missing a few brain cells?”

“Well I’m not going to just sit here and let my dreams be invaded by creepy girls in dresses and blood!” Laura said, “I have to do something!”

There was a pause then, as if it weighed nothing, the chair was hauled back and Laura found herself nose to nose with Carmilla. She blinked. The words in her head stuttering to a stop at the pretty girl hovering an inch from her skin. 

“Um, hey?” Laura said.

Carmilla kept looking at her, “When was the last time you slept?”

Laura’s eyes went wide before she could hide them behind a lifted chin, “I sleep just fine thank you. Not that you would know. Where do you even go every night?”

A finger touched under her eye, soft and careful and smudging the make-up Laura had hastily applied. She rubbed the concealer between her fingers, “You’ve got circles, trebleclef.”

Laura groaned but let herself sink into her chair like her body had been begging, “Fine. It’s maybe sort of possible that I haven’t slept in a couple of days but that’s like. The college experience. It’s totally normal and definitely not due to creepy dreams that have me scared to close my eyes. No siree. It’s just because I’m working so hard on cracking this case wide open.”

There was silence and when Laura looked up, it was to Carmilla holding her hot chocolate mug and staring into its depth. Abruptly it was shoved in Laura’s hands, “What if I could get you something to help you sleep?”

“That. Would. Be excellent actually?” Laura said. 

Carmilla avoided meeting her eyes, “Well, if you go crazy from sleep deprivation then they might stick me with someone much worse.” 

She stood but passed right through Laura’s space and Laura breath hitched at the smell of leather and books, her grip tightening on the mug, “So. Um,” Laura made herself say, “I don’t suppose you want to tell me how you know about the girl in the dreams and the creepy organ.”

“Well now,” Carmilla said, “I have to keep my air of mystery somehow, now don’t I?”

It was only minutes later that Laura realized the violin melody was leaking through her head again. Seizing the moment, she practically leapt into bed and smushed her face against her pillow.

It smelled like leather and old books.

# 

Hours later, she darted awake. Eyes wide. Terror on her skin but an overwhelming thought in her head that drowned out the feeling. “The violin and the organ are playing the same music!”

“What?”

Laura whirled, surprised to find Carmilla looking at her from the other bed over the top of a book. “Nothing,” Laura shook her head, “Just nothing.”

“More bad dreams?”

Laura sighed, rubbing her face, “Something like that.”

“Here.” Carmilla reached into her bag and pulled out some combination of leather and what appeared to be a dried bat wing. She approached Laura softly. Slowly. Reaching out, she tied the whole thing around Laura’s wrist.

Eyeing it, Laura asked, “Um. Thanks?”

“It’s a charm or whatever,” Carmilla shrugged, “To help with the bad dreams?”

It wasn’t the violin music but as Laura settled back into bed, she could feel Carmilla’s eyes on her. Carefully watching. Laura mumbled into the pillow, “It’s nice you’re here. Thank you for the charm.”

She only heard a shuffle of what she assumed was surprise before fading into dreams. 

#

Groaning, Laura slammed her head into the open book on her lap. The latest find from an ill-advised trip to the library, it was a handwritten account from a JP Armitage. The last person she could find who had tried to unravel the mystery of the girl in the dreams and the missing girls that followed her. 

While the book spoke of the creepy organ music, not one mentioned the same melody as violin songs.

“Shockingly,” Carmilla voice cut into her misery, “You can’t actually absorb information by osmosis. Get your face out of the book.”

Laura stayed flopped over the book but turned her head to look at Carmilla, “it can’t hurt to try.”

Carmilla actually glanced up at that, “Skin oils are bad for old books.”

Laura pouted but lifted her head. She flipped another couple of pages, scowling at their sheer lack of insight. Eventually, she turned to Carmilla. “So you’re not going to tell me how you know about the girl right?”

She could see Carmilla tense, “I hear things. That’s all you need to know.”

“Fine.” Laura set her chin, “What do you know about soul music?”

Carmilla’s head snapped up, “What?”

“Soul music,” Laura repeated, “or is that too sentimental for you? You know. The music you hear in your head that other people will hear if you fall in love with them.

She couldn’t make out Carmilla’s expression at all, “I’m aware of the concept.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure that the creepy organ music I’m hearing in the dream has to be soul music right? Like, what else could it be and why else would it be repeating over and over again? So, I think it must be the girl’s. Part of her warning I guess?” Laura said. Carmilla’s face flickered. Fell. 

“Except,” Laura added, “I don’t really know how it’s part of a warning. Like, if I wanted to warn people that their music was going to get stolen then I’d probably use silence or something? Not play the same creepy music over and over again.” She looked at Carmilla, “What do you think?”

Carmilla had sunk lower into her book, “I think I’m not the person to ask, trebleclef.”

“Oh come on,” Laura said. She pushed the wheelie chair over to Carmilla’s bed, “You must know something! You’re all philosophical. This should be right up your alley.”

“Leave it!” Carmilla snapped.

Laura shook her head, “You know something, Carmilla! And if you’d just tell me then-”

“I don’t have soul music!” Carmilla shouted, the book fell beside her. Laura froze. “I don’t have soul music, okay?” Carmilla repeated. “So yes, the only sound in my head is silence and that’s definitely a warning. Would you please just let this drop.”

Carmilla picked up the book again, covering her face with it, but Laura was almost certain that she wasn’t reading it.

“You don’t have music?” she said softly.

“That’s what I said,” Carmilla snapped, “Can you just drop it?”

Giving herself a moment to work up the courage, Laura climbed from the chair. She dropped down beside Carmilla, sitting on her bed with her back to the wall. As soon as she sat, Carmilla stiffened beside her. Laura paused. Waited. 

She wasn’t pushed away.

She wasn’t welcomed either, Carmilla’s muscles tense beside her. 

“What are you reading?” Laura asked at last. She peered over Carmilla’s shoulder.

Carmilla frowned but came across as surprise over anger, “It’s in German.”

“Oh. I can’t read German.” 

Carmilla snorted, “I figured.”

Her muscles were still tight, fingers wrapped around the pages. Laura couldn’t even imagine what it must be like inside her head, to have only silence when she looked into her soul. Laura could feel her own music welling inside her, the rhythm of the guitar settling in her bones. Carmilla didn’t have anything to settle her. 

So, Laura settled in deeper beside her. Actively pressing against her side and surprised to find Carmilla so warm, “Well then,” she said, “You’re going to have to translate for me.”

Carmilla blinked, looking over at Laura as though trying to gauge her seriousness. Laura just waited. 

Slowly, Carmilla began to read aloud.

#

At some point, Laura must have fallen asleep to the sound of Carmilla’s voice. She shifted slightly, finding a blanket pulled over her shoulders as she curled into Carmilla’s pillow. Her pillow. 

It might have been a dream but she was certain she felt a touch to her shoulder, pulling the blanket a little closer, “Go back to sleep. You get little enough of it as is.”

The violin music faded in, drowsy and soft.

So Laura reached out, managing to latch onto a warm arm that froze under her touch like a startled cat, “I’m sorry,” she slurred, “about your music. We’re gonna get it back. Promise. Get it heard. Even you.”

There was a pause. A brushing of hair from her face. 

The music swelled, lighter and faster than it had been before.

When she woke up, Laura found herself reaching for her guitar all over again, once again trying to parse out the simple melody that seemed to be following her. 

#

She’d planned on going to bed that night but, even with the charm wrapped around her wrist, Laura couldn’t bring herself to do it. Not with the room so empty and silent, even her own guitar music suddenly not enough to calm her. So, Laura worked through the night with a blanket around her shoulders and a stack of cookies as tall as she was. 

Carmilla’s music was gone. Stolen, Laura assumed, by whatever had been stealing from the other girls. That’s why Carmilla knew the girl in her dreams. Carmilla was one of the girls that Laura was trying to save. 

Somehow, it seemed more urgent when she knew it was Carmilla.

So Laura stayed awake, trying to figure out who the girl was, what she wanted, and why no-one else was hearing violin music. 

The last haunted her. 

She’d started to develop a theory. A silly little hope only to have it dashed by five little words, “I don’t have soul music.”

If she could get Carmilla’s music back. Then. Maybe.

Laura shook her head at the thought and went back to digging. But try as she might, even she couldn’t avoid sleep forever. The nightmares crept in, the blood rising and rising as the twisted organ version of the violin music that normally calmed, filled her head with the need to run. Run and run and never look back.

“Laura! Laura. Laura! Wake up!”

She jolted up, throwing herself back from the desk and tumbling right off the chair. 

Laura never hit the ground, warm arms caught her and held her close. Carmilla pushed her onto the nearest bed and knelt in front of her. A hand on her shoulder while the other brushed hair from her face, “Laura. You were shouting. Are you okay?”

Carmilla’s face was twisted, mouth drawn tight as her eyes swept Laura all over as if checking for physical injuries. Laura shivered, the creepy organ music seemed to run inside her bones. Her hand latched onto Carmilla’s where it rested on her shoulder. Something solid and firm and there.

She took a deep breath, “Just the nightmares again.” She laughed weakly, “They really need to try something new. All reruns.”

“Hey,” Carmilla touched her face again and Laura couldn’t stop herself from leaning into it, “It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.” Her face hardened a tad, “I’ll make sure of it. We’ll get away from here. Leave. Go anywhere else. The dreams will stop.”

“We can’t just leave,” Laura closed her eyes and let herself just feel the weight and warmth of Carmilla’s hand, the soft edges of her skin and the edge of a callous on her cheek, “We have to help everyone. Help you. Get the music back.”

“Or,” Carmilla countered, “You could stop worrying about people like me who don’t deserve and just get out.”

Laura’s eyes popped open, “Of course you deserve it.”

“I really don’t, trebleclef.” There was something sad on Carmilla’s face as she withdrew her hand so Laura chased her, touching Carmilla’s face in turn as though she could wipe the sad off. The way Carmilla froze at the touch, as though she didn’t know whether to run or lean in, broke Laura’s heart a little bit. Her music gaining a melancholy undertone. Carmilla didn’t even have that.

“You really can’t hear your own music?” Laura asked.

Carmilla’s smile was wry, “Nobody can. Not in a long time.”

Laura stood, “Then maybe you’ve just forgotten why it’s important.” She grabbed Carmilla and manhandled her onto the bed, “Sit.”

“What are you doing?” Carmilla asked.

Laura ignored her. She pulled her guitar from the closet, carefully pulling it from it’s case, slung it over her shoulder, and sat beside Carmilla.

“Laura?” Carmilla’s voice was wary. Tentative. 

She closed her eyes. Fingers hovering over the strings. She’d only ever played in soft corners and behind closed bedrooms doors. Music for her ears alone, a soul laid bare in notes and melody. She swallowed down her feelings, “Soul music is important, Carm.”

She got three notes in before a hand stopped her, covering her own. “Laura,” Carmilla’s eyes were somehow bright and afraid all at once, “if you’re about to play what I think you are then you shouldn’t. You should stop. I don’t deserve to hear that. I told you yet.”

Laura frowned at her, “You don’t get to decide that!” She gave Carmilla a glare, “It’s my soul music and I get to choose who I share it with. I’ve decided that you deserve it and I want you to listen. That’s enough. That’s all you need. Now, you are going to sit there and listen and not complain that you’re not worthy or whatever.” Laura set her chin, “My music. My choice. Shhhh.”

There was a twinge of a smile on Carmilla’s lips as she sat back, only overshadowed by the wonder her eyes. Crossing her legs on the bed, Carmilla nodded. 

With another deep breath, Laura closed her eyes and began to play what she heard in her ears. The notes flowed off her fingers, slightly more somber than she was used to but the silvery pluck of the strings still felt good under her fingers as the vibration on the wood ran through each note. Bright and alive, holding through the quick and fast moments alike. Each demanded to be noticed. Felt. A large as an electric guitar turned way up and as delicate as a ukulele all at once. A waterfall of sound that built to it’s own crescendo. As she played, the violin music ran through her head. It’s beat falling in line with the pulse of her fingers. 

Her hand moved slow on the last chord, letting the notes ring through the air as each string was slowly pulled through. The moment preserved in breath and memory. 

She kept her eyes closed, fingers on the strings as though she could hold onto the moment, “Soul music is important; we’re going to get yours back too.”

There was a sniffle and her eyes flew open. She found Carmilla with red rimmed, watery eyes and holding tight to her own knees as though her hands were worried about doing something they shouldn’t.

Their eyes met. 

“Laura.”

Her name was said like a prayer. Wonder and mystery and confusion rolled up all into one. The violin music suddenly blasted through her head, the climbing melody that she’d only heard as a phantom sound coming through crystal clear for the first time. It rolled over itself just as her own had; the beat of the rhythm matching what she’d just played. The music seemed higher, up a third where it had been, as though it was more harmony than melody.

Laura’s grip on the guitar tightened. The words spilled out, “There’s a Zeta party tomorrow night. Would. You maybe want. To go with me?”

Carmilla blinked then smiled, seeming to gather herself as she leaned forward. Words husking off her throat, “I think I might like that very much.”

There were too many feelings and too much Carmilla and violin music that shouldn’t have been in her head but was. “Okay great!” Laura shouted, making for the door, “I’ll see you then!”

She slammed into the hallway, groaning as she lightly banged her head on the hallway wall.

#

Laura hadn’t thought about it before going to bed, too caught up in a haze as to the fact that she maybe might have asked Carmilla on a date to think about bat charm bracelets and nightmares. So, when Laura fell asleep, the world turned dark.

She found herself in a small room that was decorated like something from a century gone past. Laura took a deep breath, fighting the mounting terror. She took a step and her feet squished. Refusing to glance down, Laura kept walking. She’d had this nightmare before. She knew better than to look down.

To look down at the blood under her feet. The blood that would slowly rise with every passing moment. 

Worse than the blood though was the music. The beautiful violin melody twisted into a mockery of itself as an organ spat the notes out like they were poison. The timing twisted from a four four time to a five eighth. Everything in the wrong place. Notes slamming into each other instead of floating through. 

The blood whirled, coalesced into form and Laura braced herself for the part that came next. For the weird chants and warnings about music and light. The girl was always the same, about her height with hair just as dark and eyes that trembled in anger and fear. She rose from the blood, white dress tipped in red. 

Except. The usual words didn’t come. Instead, the girl looked at her and shook her head, “I’ve been trying to warn you and yet you have not heeded my advice.”

Okay. That was new. Sentient dreams.

Laura took a step forward, “Yeah, well. You’ve been a little vague on the details but I’ve got the impression about something stealing girls music. I’m looking into it.” She observed the girl, “I don’t suppose you could offer any insight? Right now, I’m thinking maybe some kind of creepy demon?”

She hadn’t expected the girl to laugh, hard and cruel as the twisted music rose around her, “Oh, you’re just like me aren’t you? Fallen for her lies and her traps and her false melodies.” She gestured to the air, “I’ve done my best impression to alert you to it’s sound.”

“Wait?” Laura frowned, “Whose lies and trap now?”

“The Countess Karnstein.”

“Karns- Carmilla?” Laura shook her head, “Sure, Carmilla’s a little cagey and light on the details but she’s not a liar. She had her own music stolen! I thought you were trying to warn victims and Carmilla’s just one of us!”

The girl quivered and the blood rose to Laura’s knees, “Carmilla isn’t one of us! She’s one of them.” 

“Carm would never-”

“Never! Never. Hah.” The girl shook her head, “I thought so too once. I believed her lies and I thought that the Countess Karnstein could love me when all she was doing was luring me into a trap. Tell me, have you not begun to propose a romantic encounter with her? Have you not fallen into her trap as I did?” There was venom in her voice but also sadness, “She is monster who knows not what love means.” The girl extended her hands as the blood rose to Laura’s waist, “I’m trying to save you as I could not be saved.”

“Save me from what?”

The girls’ eyes glinted, “You’ve never noticed her late hours? The speed and strength with which she moves? The falseness of the music she presents or the paleness of her skin? The age that lives inside her, knowing far more than she should? The monster underneath the human veneer?”

“She’s not a monster!” Laura paused, “Wait. She’s said that before. Are you-” She gasped, “Carm knew about you but not from dreams? She knew you didn’t she. Somehow? But then,” Laura looked around her. The blood was cold and heavy, clinging to her hands and dripping like thick syrup down her arms, “How? You’re so old. You go back decades in the books.”

“I will tell you what was once told me in the hopes that you can escape where I did not,” the girl ignored the way the blood rose to her chin even as Laura gasped, tilting back to keep her mouth above it. The air reeked of iron, heavy on her tongue. She grabbed for her soul music but it was nowhere to be found, only the twisted organ music in the air.

“Countess Carmilla Karnstein is far older than you or I.” The girl said, “She is a minion of darkness with no soul or music inside her and exists only to lure girls to their doom for her mother. She has no goodness or grace in her and does not know what love means. She has tricked you.”

Laura strained on her tip toes, head tilted back as the blood rose higher and higher, drowning her as the twisted music rose around her. Something was pressed into her hand.

“Test her and see. Carmilla Karnstein is a monster. A vampire and she will kill you.”

#

Laura woke up gasping.

Her fingertips were still covered in blood, a knife clenched in her fist.

#

Carmilla let herself smile as she walked towards the dorm room with a bottle of champagne under her arm. She wasn’t sure of the protocol when one was offered a date with her roommate but it only seemed courteous to give Laura the day to prepare herself without Carmilla present. In 1698, she would of had weeks to prepare for a ball. This generation took things much more loosely.

Carmilla took a deep breath as she approached the door, subtly adjusting the bottom of her corset. She paused when she found herself humming, eyes widening slightly at the notes she’d only heard roll from an acoustic guitar falling from her tongue. Shaking her head to clear the melody, she put a hand on the door knob.

She opened the door and slipped inside, “Well, trebleclef. I’m sure you have the evening planned to the minute but I thought I’d start us off with something a little bubbly.”

Then she stopped, something in her chest screaming at her that something was wrong. Laura was waiting for her, sitting on the desk chair. Her face was dark and drawn instead of the awkward bumbling that Carmilla had expected.

For the briefest moment, unconsciously and accidentally, she reached inside herself for her own music. Nothing. Just silence. 

Laura flinched slightly, looking around her before her gaze dropped on Carmilla. Something flickering over her face. Pensive. Curious.

“Laura?” Carmilla said, “What’s wrong?”

Then her chest froze over as she saw Laura’s hands, there was a knife in her grip as she turned it over and over between her fingers. The bottle slipped from her hands and Carmilla didn’t bother catching it, instead she let it crash on the floor and shatter into a million tiny pieces. 

Not again. It was happening again.

It happening again and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

So Carmilla set her stance to brace for impact and let her shoulders fall inwards, “You know.”

Laura’s gaze was steady, “I met the girl in my nightmares last night. She said some weird stuff about you.” The knife went round and round and round in her hands and Carmilla waited for her to make the cut that would reveal the monster underneath. Expose enough blood that her fangs would have no choice but to come out. 

It didn’t come. 

Instead, knife still whirling, Laura looked up with confused eyes and simply asked, “Are you a vampire?”

“Yes.” The confession was heavy on her lips and she looked down.

“Has your mother been the one kidnapping girls?”

“Yes.”

“And you’ve been helping her?”

Carmilla had never felt so small but she forced her feet to stay steady, “Yes.”

“Do you know the girl in my nightmares?”

“Yes.” 

There was a pause where no more questions came, as though Laura was waiting for some further answer. “Her name is Elle. She’s. We.” Carmilla sighed and looked at the floor, “I loved her. I tried to save her but when my mother revealed my truly monstrous nature to her. She never forgave me.” 

“You turned her over?” Laura’s voice was small.

“No!” Carmilla shook her head, “I’d planned it all out. We were going to sail to America but my mother got wind of our plan and told Elle the truth before we could leave. As punishment for my attempted disobedience, I was locked away in a coffin of blood. It was only later I found that Elle had been killed shortly after.”

“Wait.” She didn’t know what to make of Laura’s tone, “You were buried in a coffin of blood? For how long?”

“Roughly seventy years.”

“Carmilla.” The word seemed to whoosh out with Laura’s breath and a hundred different emotions were buried inside of it. “Do you hear this music?” Laura asked.

Carmilla frowned, confused. “I told you. I can’t hear music. I haven’t been able to since my mother turned me.”

Laura’s eyes went wide. Her words almost absent, “So it was taken from you. She was wrong.” Then, “Elle told me not to trust you.”

Carmilla closed her eyes, “Well,” she said, “She’s probably right. You can never trust a monster.”

There was a clatter and Carmilla’s eyes opened quick enough to see the knife fall to the floor before her vision was filled with nothing but Laura. Eyes fierce, “You. Are not a monster.”

Carmilla frowned, “Trebleclef. I’m the very definition of the word.”

“No.” 

Laura Hollis crossed her arms and stood stubbornly in front of her, socks soaking up dropped champagne. Carmilla shook her head. This was all wrong. It wasn’t supposed to go like this. It didn’t go like this.

Laura didn’t understand. She didn’t get it and, as much as Carmilla didn’t want to, she couldn’t keep hiding this. Not now. So she let her fangs slide down, took a breath, and spoke, “Yes. I am.”

She knew they were glinting in the dim dormroon light, leaving her mouth open enough that Laura couldn’t miss them. Laura eyed them for a moment then said, “Your teeth are very sharp. Congrats. Doesn’t make you a monster.”

Carmilla threw her arms out, “You are infuriating!”

“Because I’m right?”

“Because you’re wrong!”

“Okay,” Laura said and Carmilla turned around to face her. Immediately suspicious. Laura didn’t agree with anyone. “Okay, let’s do a test. Because I’ve been thinking about this all day. What Elle said. Things you’ve told me in your weird cryptic way that suddenly makes infinitely more sense. And I’ve got a question for you.”

She took a deep breath and Carmilla braced herself, “Are you going to hand me over to your mother?”

Carmilla reeled back, her very bones objecting to the question, “What?”

“Right now,” Laura stepped after her, “That’s your job right? Collect the girls your mother picked and hand them over. I’m one right? You’re supposed to turn me in. Well, I know you’re vampire and I know your mother’s behind it all so you should probably bring me in and lock me up or whatever it is you do to steal my music. So, that’s my question. Are you going to do it?”

Carmilla crossed her arms, “I should. You’re a fool to confront someone you literally know is a vampire and wants to kidnap you alone.”

“I did consider setting a trap and tying you up with garlic,” Laura admitted with a shrug, “But then I thought about this.” She held up the batcharm bracelet, “Why’d you give me this then?”

Carmilla said nothing. 

Laura took another step forward, “Elle doesn’t think you’re capable of caring.” Carmilla flinched and Laura made an apologetic face but I think that maybe she wasn’t listening properly. I think, this whole thing might be a little more complicated than we thought.”

“Always is.” Carmilla tried for a quip.

“You didn’t answer the question,” Laura kept advancing, reporter face on, “Are you going to turn me in? Because I don’t think you are.”

She was right in Carmilla’s space but the question tapered from confidence to tentative words by the end. Carmilla reached out, softly grabbing Laura’s ponytail and letting it slide between her fingers. Laura’s breath caught.

Carmilla’s answer tumbled out, “No.” She focused on the feeling of Laura’s hair between her fingers, “At first. Maybe. But now. No.”

“Then,” Laura was fighting to keep her breathing even but something shone in her eyes that made Carmilla’s heart beat doubletime, “You’re not a monster at all and one day, I’ll prove it to you.”

Carmilla shook her head, “Laura.”

“Screw them!” Laura said, “Screw whatever Elle or your mother or anyone else ever told you. You’re not a monster. You’re you. They can take your song away but it’s still yours. You’re still you. Don’t let them hide that.”

It wasn’t supposed to go like this.

Carmilla stepped back, giving Laura her space, “You’re a very strange girl, Miss Hollis.”

Laura grinned, “I could say the same of you. Also, your ex is really weird. Wanna help me take down your mother?”

Carmilla groaned and sank onto her bed.

“So I’m going to take that as a yes?”

#

The moon was out but Laura’s eyes weren’t open, instead, she had her eyes closed. Listening. Listening to a violin melody that was coming in as clear as day, the notes on repeat and only growing stronger as each day passed. She smiled, letting her fingers tap along to their beat and slowly memorizing the melody as it passed up and down and over her ears. 

“What are you doing?”

Her eyes popped open. Carmilla was sitting in her own bed, reading a giant Sumerian tome that they’d rescued from the library and trying to narrow down what her mother was doing with the girls. 

“Nothing,” Laura said. Still she couldn’t stop smiling. 

“You’re very weird,” Carmilla said, “Do you maybe want to help me with this?”

Scrambling over to the other bed, Laura let herself sink just an inch into Carmilla’s side as she peered down at words she couldn’t even read. She didn’t know who the melody belonged to but she had a hunch. She glanced up at Carmilla. 

Just because Carmilla couldn’t hear it. Didn’t mean it wasn’t there.

#

The music seemed to follow her everywhere, changing tones to compliment itself as the situation demanded. Laura had never heard of changing music but she took it in stride. 

Even though Carmilla had objected, she followed Laura around as they tried to take down Carmilla’s mother. The violin dropping into something entirely different, the same melody but the notes moved around. Played with so that pauses became notes and notes became pauses. No less beautiful. Just different.

Another vampire had come for Laura and the music had vanished. Pulled away. But then Carmilla made a choice. She punched the vampire, Laura in his grasp, in the face. Then she raced out the door, chasing him across campus. The music settled into something deeper, taking on something of a minor key as Carmilla vanished out the door. Laura caught her breath, listening to it’s beat with her fingers clenched until Carmilla came back in the door. 

It was something light and frothy that started in her ears when Carmilla said something sarcastic and Laura snorted. She covered her mouth immediately but as the music faded in, Carmilla caught her eye. Amusement shining. Laura waved her off with a “Carm, don’t be rude.”

She couldn’t quite squash her smile. 

When Laura woke form another nightmare, drowning in blood as Elle screamed at her for being a fool. The music was there. Tentative and caring and full. Carmilla was there and Laura let herself hide in her warmth and the song. Tucking her head in Carmilla’s shoulder clinging tight as Carmilla told her stories of days gone by that banished the nightmares back to dreams. 

The change caught her breath when Carmilla extending her hand, offering to teach Laura how to waltz. Her breath vanished altogether as Carmilla pulled her close. Face to face. Chest to chest. Body warm against Laura’s own as Carmilla gently spun her. The music that she found was the simplest she’d heard yet. Completely stripped down as Carmilla smiled shyly at her, peeking out from behind her bangs and keeping Laura’s hand clasped in her own even as the dancing ended. 

Eyes closed as Carmilla slept, Laura listened to the simple solo and pulled out her guitar. Hands trembling as she played her own melody through to it’s beat and finished with tears in her eyes as she found they matched perfectly.

The tears turned to something else entirely when she found out that Carmilla, in order to save Laura, had traded someone else away from her mother. No repentance on her face as Laura found what she’d done and Laura knew that she’d make the same choice all over again.

So Laura had choked on the words as she told Carmilla to leave. To run away and hide in the night. The music had dropped into the saddest thing she’d ever heard, tearing into her chest as Laura threw herself into her pillow. The usually confident notes tearing themselves apart as the melody changed and found itself an octave lower than it should have been. The flourishes were gone. Every swipe across the strings hurts. 

But Carmilla’s mother had to be stopped, Carmilla or not. So, Laura pulled herself to her feet by the music in her own. Banishing the violin entirely under the sound of her acoustic. Every note a battlecry as she found herself in the depths of a pit facing down a god and a vampire. 

Laura held tight to her music as they battered against her, grabbing at her very soul and trying to pull it away. She saw Elle, trapped inside their power and shaking her head. Sympathy and anger on her face. The notes warbling and screaming as they fought to keep to their own beat against the all encompassing noise that the god was making, trying to draw her in. To steal and change her song. 

Laura clung, fighting until she could remember nothing but her own music. 

Until.

Violins slammed through her mind, the simple melody elevated to something that flew high in the grace notes and soared over the highest strings as vibrato ran through everything. Confidence. Anger. Fear. The music ran through Laura’s chest, mixing with her own and jolting her from her silence. From the place within herself that she’d hidden away from the god’s power. 

She opened her eyes, the violin as loud as her guitar, and saw Carmilla. Saw Carmilla in front of her with her hands on Laura’s face and calling for her. 

Her words came fast, “I’d forgotten my song.” she said, “I’d forgotten every note and, while I still can’t hear it, you made me remember.” Her hands were shaking and Laura grabbed at them. Carmilla pressed her forehead to Laura’s, “You made me feel like me again and I remembered every note that was once mine. Screw them right.” Carmilla smiled but it was sad and happy all at once, “It’s mine. They can’t have it.”

Then she turned, picked up a violin that Laura hadn’t noticed lying at her side. 

Carmilla played. Her fingers flying over every note like it was born to play them as her bow hand swept back and forth without an ounce of hesitation. Up and down and back forth. A perfect angle against the strings as the notes sang true.

And Laura was frozen. Stuck. Unable to move as she watched Carmilla play, eyes closed and the smallest smile as she walked towards her mother and the pit like the god’s music was doing nothing to her. Like she couldn’t even hear it over her own sound. Her own soul. She watched Carmilla play her soul music.

The same song that Laura had been hearing in her head for months.

It was Carmilla’s. 

Carmilla loved her. 

Which was when Laura realized what Carmilla meant to do, the same knife that Elle had given her sticking from Carmilla’s pocket. Laura lunged after her but it was too late. The song ended even as the version in Laura’s head continued to thunder loud. 

Carmilla took the smallest bow, through aside the violin, grabbed the knife, and jumped. 

#

A god died that day and Laura watched as Elle’s soul was lost back to the wind. 

It was a victory.

It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. 

Because the violin in her head had been cut off. Stopped mid-song. 

Gone.

And all Laura could find was silence. 

She pulled out her guitar to try and fill it, playing her own song over and over again. It wasn’t enough and, as she dissolved into tears, she found herself playing Carmilla’s refrain over and over again.

#

She was playing it again, three days without the real melody passing through her head when Laura fingers, bruised from pressing the steel strings, refused to play another note. Putting the guitar aside, she flopped onto Carmilla’s bed. 

Reaching inward, she tugged on the place where her own song lived and let it slide through her skin, providing a comfort against the darkness. She was running it through for the second time when Laura jolted upright, clamping her hands over her actual ears so that she could hear just a little bit better.

She could have sworn.

Almost. 

Her eyes went wide. Underneath the guitar, so quiet that it was almost inaudible and warbling in a near-distortion, was the sound of a violin. That same melody. Carmilla’s melody.

If it was still playing, then, maybe.

She was alive.

She bolted from the room, determined to track it down. Her feet brought her back to the pit where she’d lost Carmilla, the song leading her like a compass as it grew softer and louder with every turn. Laura peered over the pit’s edge, there was only one way left to go. The last place she’d seen Carmilla.

Laura climbed down, slipping and sliding her way down the rocks that crumbled under her grasp. Tumbling down to the bottom, she caught her feet as she peered through the semi-darkness and tried not to think about the dead god under her feet. 

Then she saw a shape a darkness, a body lying crumpled on the ground as the music in her head got just a little bit louder. 

“Carm!” Laura sprinted and dropped to her knees.

Carmilla was all twisted, her body bent at inhuman angles and covered in a layer of dirt and some kind of strange purple blood. “Please wake up,” Laura said, “Please wake up you stupid vampire.”

She grabbed Carmilla but, as soon as her hands touched smooth skin, reared back. Electricity crackled over her body stinging her hands. 

“Ah ah ah,” a familiar voice said, “Don’t touch.”

Elle rose from the ground like the ghost she was, hovering over Carmilla. The white dress of Laura’s dreams had been replaced with a dark black number that perfectly matched the glower on Elle’s face, “I did warn you.”

“Warn me about what?” Laura shouted, “About Carmilla? She saved everyone! All the girls and everyone and even-“ Laura stuttered at the words, “even me.” She shook her head against the memories, “What are you even still doing here? The god is dead, your soul is free. You can go.”

Elle’s smile was wicked, “I had some unfinished business actually. I was ready to finally see what lies beyond the veil but, when I saw that Carmilla wasn’t quite dead yet, well I figured that I’d stay here and finish the job.”

“She saved you!”

“She killed me!” Elle shot back, “She doesn’t get to live some happy ending while I ended up dead.”

 

Laura inched as close as she could to Carmilla without actually touching her, “Her mother is the one who killed you. Carmilla loved you. She loved you and you betrayed her and you’re just mad at yourself because you didn’t listen to her.”

Elle sniffed, “Carmilla didn’t love me. She was using me. I’ve no doubt that her little ‘get away plan’ was just another elaborate scheme to hand me over to her mother. She’s a vampire. She’s not capable of love.”

“Yes, she is!” Laura said. Her hands itched to touch Carmilla. Instead, she steeled her chin and said the words aloud, “She loves me.”

Elle paused, watching her very carefully. There was a moment of silence and Laura watched Elle’s face flicker. Then it broke, descending into a laugh. Low and long and sincere enough to have her wiping a tear from her eye. There was actual pity on her face as she contained herself, “You actually believe that, don’t you?”

Laura set her jaw and tugged on the music once again, the soft violin notes bleeding into her guitar. Quieter than before. She fought past the panic, “I know it’s true.”

Elle eyed her, “You really believe Carmilla loves you?”

“Yes.”

“You’re a fool. You have no idea what it takes to survive in this world,” Elle snapped, “But, how about this, I’ll let you prove it. If you can, you’ll get her back.”

Laura’s heart leapt, “What kind of proof.”

Elle circled them slowly and Laura stepped over Carmilla, dropping into a fighting stance. Elle simply smiled, “I’ve locked Carmilla in, well, some of the other girls called it a ‘Nightmarescape’. Basically an endless series of our worst nightmares come to haunt us. The fish locked us in there.”

Laura’s jaw dropped, a surge of sympathy flooding through her.

“I’ve modified somewhat for Carmilla, more scenario focused, and more fun for me to watch.” Elle sighed, “most nightmares are so boring. No drama in them. I’ll admit, I might have gone a tad dramatic on the ones I used to contact you and the other victims. Perhaps a bit creepy for a warning but I only had the Nightmarescape to work with so, we made do.”

“How does that let me prove that Carmilla can love?” Laura circled to keep Elle in front of her.

“Well you’ve been there before you see!” Elle clapped her hands, “In our shared dreams, so I can use that little connection to pop you into the Nightmaresphere with Carmilla. All you have to do is get her to fall in love with you. If she falls in love, that nightmare will be broken. Simple enough if she truly already loves you.” She floated closer, hand outstretched, “Do we have a deal?”

Laura eyed the hand then looked down at Carmilla, still sprawled in the dirt. Face deathly pale. 

The violin even quieter in Laura’s head. 

She took the hand, “Deal.”

When she tried to pull her hand away, Elle refused to let go. Laura struggled to free herself but started to sink to the ground, black growing in the corners of her vision.

Elle leaned closer, a whisper in her ear, “Oh, and I may have forgotten to mention that it’s an entire series of nightmares and you won’t remember that they aren’t real either!” Laura fought to pull away but Elle’s hand was like iron, “I did try to warn you. Carmilla Karnstein cannot love and those of us who dare to love her only ever meet an awful fate.”

The world went black.

# 

Laura huffed, throwing herself onto her bed and trying to ignore her jerk of a roommate. It had been a simple enough question, one thrown around almost casually, ‘how long until you fall in love with your soulmate’. Lifting her arm from where she’d thrown it over her face to block out even her view of Carmilla, Laura eyed the oversized male watch permanently worn on her own wrist. 

A soulmate watch that had been with her since the day she’d been born. 

It slowly ticked at her, a reminder that while most people had moved to digital countdowns, hers was still made of ticking gears. The countdown was coming up. Mere months until they fell in love. The watch had started the moment she’d seen her soulmate for the first time.

Unfortunately, she’d been five at the time and really hadn’t been paying attention. Too excited to start school. 

Still, only months until she fell in love. There was a crunching noise and Laura looked over to find Carmilla grinning at her, eating one of her cookies. Laura marched over and stole the package back. Whoever they were, they had to be better than Carmilla Karnstein and her old fashioned silver pocket watch.

Except, time rolled on and Laura found that maybe Carmilla was more than she’d figured. Quiet words in the dead of night confessing that Carmilla thought her own countdown to true love was broken. 

And, when Laura found out that Carmilla’s pocket watched ticked, that it was the ticking that had Carmilla convinced it was broken because a 300 year old kidnapper vampire was unworthy of love. Her heart shattered for Carmilla.

When the time came, standing in a dorm room with Carmilla in front of her as they argued about invading the giant timepiece Carmilla’s mother was using to control campus, Laura wasn’t even surprised to hear Carmilla’s watch alarm go off at the same time as her own. A beep and a bell. She didn’t even look down to see the zeros Laura just grabbed Carmilla, as dirty and dusty as she was, and kissed her. 

She only stopped when violin music suddenly filled her head, causing her to rear back and grip her head as the music slammed through her. She knew that melody. Knew those notes.

“Laura!” There was a hand on her back, rubbing circles, “Laura! Are you okay?”

The memories surged through her of Elle and the pit and Carmilla’s music. She grabbed Carmilla, tears in her eyes, “Carm! You’re here. I found you! She was wrong.” Laura pressed her forehead against Carmilla’s, “she was wrong. You love me.”

Carmilla laughed and pulled Laura back into her, “What tipped you off?”

The edges of Laura’s vision went black. “No!” She clung to Carmilla, “No! We did it. We won. That’s it. Bring us back!”

But the world went black and Carmilla was gone. 

#

Laura was falling, the giant pit swallowing her whole. Carmilla disappeared from view even as she leapt after Laura, superstrength unable to give her the speed she needed. Too covered in her mother’s mind controlled minions to even manage a run.

But the last thing Laura saw was Carmilla trying. Fighting. Struggling to get to her. Face breaking as she screamed Laura’s name.

Laura hadn’t even made it through her first year of superschool and she’d already been bested by a supervillain. She’d never gotten her superpowers, if she even had any. 

She’d never told Carmilla how she felt about her. It had seemed silly. The unpowered daughter of the world’s greatest superhero falling for the broody daughter of the world’s greatest villain. But fall she had. 

And now Carmilla would never know. 

She should have told her. She shouldn’t have dragged Carmilla into this. Carmilla had enough ghosts in her past, enough guilt on shoulders from a legacy that wasn’t even her own. Fighting the imposed label that she ‘must be a supervillain’ because Laura had asked her to.

“Laura!” her name echoed down the edges of the pit but there was nothing Laura could do about it. It was broken and desperate and a plea to the universe. Carmilla. 

Then she heard it, the quick blast music in her head. It was made of desperation and prayers, whizzing through the notes at a double speed. And Laura remembered. 

She was falling and then she was flying the world spun as she suddenly shot straight up into the air, leaving the fast approached bottom of the massive pit behind. In this world, Laura’s superpowers finally showed up. She slammed over the top of the pit and, not knowing how to stop, ran right into Carmilla and picked her up.

Laura laughed. She laughed as she was flying and Carmilla was in her arms and there was music in her head. In the clouds, she kissed her. The words spilling out, “I love you. I remember, I love you.”

Carmilla’s jaw dropped but then, “I love you too.”

Laura laughed again, “I know.”

The music swelled. Her eyes started to dim.

She pulled Carmilla tight, “Don’t let go.”

“What?” Still,Carmilla’s arms wrapped around her.

“Don’t let me go.” Laura begged, “Use that superstrength and hang on tight. I’ll find you.”

The world faded to black again.

#

She was bleeding. Laura was bleeding and everyone around her was dead, Carmilla’s mother and the vampires strewn across the floor. Danny and Laf and Perry and Kirsch already long gone. Laura dragged herself across the floor, dropping the stake in her hand and pointedly ignoring the long silver blade jammed into her stomach. 

It didn’t matter. She couldn’t fix it. Not this. 

So, instead, she dragged herself hand over hand until she was draped over the coffin in the center of the room. The one Carmilla had stepped into willing in an effort to save Laura, a deal made with her mother. Carmilla locked inside. Laura tried pulling at the lid but couldn’t beat the nails used to hammer it in place.

The smallest hole in the middle from where they’d poured the blood onto her to finish filling the coffin up. 

“Carm,” Laura choked the word and poked her finger in the hole. She started crying when a finger linked with her own. Like a pinky promise. 

The world was already hazy as she watched her blood form a final layer on top of the coffin, Carmilla speaking words she couldn’t really hear as she bled out. Brain fuzzy.

Until, soft violin music poured through. A minor key and full of nothing but sadness.

And Laura remembered. So she smiled and held Carmilla’s finger a little tighter, “Don’t be sad.” She whispered, “We had dancing and cookies and that’s so much more than nothing. And you’re going to get out of here and you’re going to be great. You’re going to change the world, Carm. I know it.”

The world went black and she didn’t know if it was from dying or the nightmarescape but the last thing she felt was Carmilla finger clinging to her own.

#

There was a monster in front of her and Laura clung to the rose in her hand as a pale girl with long fangs loomed over her, the eerily castle around them cast in shadows as she whirled away. A curse clicked into place that bound them to each other for a year.

Something in her itched that she knew this story. That beast and a castle and a rose were a familiar tale. When she eventually lost herself in a library, a gift shared with the monster of the castle, Laura couldn’t keep herself from pulling a book from a shelf and settling in next to the supposed beast. 

It was hard to see someone as beastly when they huffed over the fact that part of their curse meant not being able to read anything inside it. So Laura read.

She read and read and stories flowed from the pages of faraway lands and Juliet’s and fancy balls. 

They threw her a ball. When the music turned to that of a violin as Carmilla pulled Laura into her arms, whirling her around the ballroom so her golden dress shone, Laura could only smile and press her head to Carmilla’s chest. A hand on a blue jacket to hold her still, Laura kissed Carmilla right on her overly fanged smile. 

Carmilla froze.

“You’re not a monster,” Laura told her, ignoring the black infringing on her vision to look at Carmilla’s face and brush her hair from her face where it covered blood red eyes. “It this is your nightmare, that you’re truly this, then it’s all for naught. Because I love you anyway.”

Laura had just enough time to see Carmilla melt before she vanished.

#

Laura stared as Carmilla was dragged into the main room of the mansion, an iron collar around her neck and Bagheera falling to pieces behind her. The clockwork cat more broken than Laura had ever seen. Laura sat still as Cookie tried to leap towards them, wings flapping but the clockwork dragon was unable to get any airtime on wings with gears that wouldn’t click. 

Vordenberg looked at her, triumphant, “I am very much going to kill Carmilla.”

She pulled herself together enough to barter.

The world felt numb, a forgotten piece of the remains of Danny’s hawk still lying on the floor where she’d died, and Laura could only watch. Watch as he rambled and talked.

But then he put a sword to Bagheera’s head and Laura rose to her feet, moved, grabbed. Her clockworkmaker’s hammer in her hand on reflex as she held it to the heart of Vordenberg’s clockwork weasel. Right over the sparker.

They should have seen his betrayal coming.

“I’ll do it, she threatened, “Let her go or I’ll kill you.”

His smile was patronizing as he told her she wouldn’t. That she was too good a person for that. So, as he raised the sword again, Laura looked at Carmilla. She looked at Carmilla and didn’t hesitate. The hammer smashed down and the sparker crushed underneath, sparks scattering across the floor as the gears dropped any sense of form under the blow.

 

He died. Cookie’s wings cracked off entirely, crumbling to the floor. 

The music poured into her head and Laura cried as Carmilla’s clockwork cat, that piece of her soul, limped forward and fell into her lap. A cold metal tongue trying to lick away her tears.

#

She was a goddess and flowers grew around her feet only to immediately die as she stomped away from Carmilla, god of death and the underworld, shouting that even if she’d been curious to know what was in the underworld, she certainly didn’t want to be trapped her. 

Carmilla shouting back that she’d happily let her leave if she could. 

Except, with time and patience and tender hand, flowers can grow in any soil. Even that of the dead. With nothing else to do, Laura talked to Carmilla and made gardens grow through the darkness of the underworld. Something in her stomach flipping when Carmilla would stare down at them and smile.

Never daring to touch. Keeping her gloves on tight.

She knew what her touch could do, goddess of death for a reason. 

So as Laura watched her, that familiar itch to make something new grew and she found herself labouring for weeks to design a new flower. When it finally emerged, a red bloom unfurling petals that had layers upon layers and a stem with thorns tucked between the leaves, Laura presented it to Carmilla as a gift. 

Carmilla smiled until Laura reached out, slowly pulling the glove from her hand.

“Laura, no. I’ll kill it. I kill everything.”

“You don’t,” Laura assured her, “You won’t. Not this one.”

Carmilla touched the flower and it stayed red. Stayed alive.

Laura was already tearing up when Carmilla looked up at her, eyes bright and shining, and music poured through her head. 

#

The music poured through her head as Carmilla carefully kissed every scar on her body, Carmilla’s past written over her skin like a roadmap of pain and years full of suffering. Soft and tender and with the weight of hundreds of years behind it.

As Laura listened, as Carmilla’s story poured from her lips, every mistake and lie laid bare, Laura could have sworn that one violin had turned into two.

#

She heard a splash that she shouldn’t have heard. Made by someone she promised she wouldn’t go back for after their betrayal.

The splashing stopped. And Laura nodded. 

Until there was one giant one, a whole body entering the water very quickly.

Laura’s eyes went wide when she heard her name shouted in that burbling way humans attempted when they were under the water. She shot away, tail moving easily through the water towards the sound of the burbles. She couldn’t hear anything but the sound. Her heart twisting when the noise stopped. 

When she saw Carmilla, suspended underwater as sunlight cut through the waves to land on her face, she wasn’t moving. Laura grabbed her, whipping them both towards the surface so fast that she literally breeched the water.

“Breathe!” she shouted and shook Carmilla, “Breathe you annoyingly air-needing human!”

Carmilla coughed and her heartrate slowed, “Flounder,” Carmilla rasped, “We have got to stop meeting like this.”

“Stop nearly drowning!” Laura snapped, fear taking over, “Wear a lifejacket or something.”

“I had to see you,” Carmilla confessed, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to tell my mother mermaids exist. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” She clung to Laura’s shoulders like she was afraid the Princess would slip from her glass. 

It was at that moment that Laura realized what she’d been hearing since the burbles started, since the splash that meant Carmilla was throwing herself into the water.

Violin music. Two at least. 

The memories faded in and Laura pulled Carmilla closer, her tail whirling just enough to keep them above the waves. “I forgive you,” she whispered, “I’ll always forgive you.”

#

“You can’t say that. You shouldn’t forgive me!” Laura threw her hands in the air and backed away from Carmilla, nearly tripped over her dress as her royal tiara slipped slightly on her head. She ripped it off, only the sheer value of the jewels keeping her from chucking it across the room. Her voice was frantic, wavering, “You shouldn’t be here, Carmilla! It’s one thing for us to lie about dating for years but I got you disposed. You can’t even rule your own country now. Mattie or Will will have to do it!” 

Carmilla was staring at her, eyes as dark as her dress. She took a step forward, revealing the combat boots underneath.

“You can’t stand there and say things like that!” Laura shook her head and stepped farther back, “That you want to be with me. That you don’t want it to be fake. I don’t deserve that, Carm. I’m going to tell everyone that we were lying and that they have to give you back your crown because you don’t have to be my consort. It wasn’t supposed to go like this!”

Carmilla continued walking towards her and Laura found herself unable to read the expression on her best friend’s face even as she was pinned between Carmilla and a table. Laura’s eyes were wet and she was crying.

Carmilla picked up the tiara and slowly set it back on her head, eyes fixed on getting it perfect. “Did you miss me?” Carmilla whispered.

The tears leaked out, “Like someone cut a hole in me.”

Three violins soared together, a perfect triad as Carmilla leaned in and kissed her.

#

She was laughing as she climbed from the pit, Carmilla’s hand in hers and her name written across Carmilla’s chest in ink that would never come off. The music burst to life, the melody surrounded by a host of flourishes and harmonies that wove around it as Carmilla kissed the back of her hand before smiling wide as the sun shone down on them.

Carmilla’s name peaking from the edges of Laura’s own shirt.

#

Even if she was the quarterback, there was no way that Laura Hollis could fulfill the tradition and date a cheerleader. She may have been fake dating Carmilla but that was different. It got the papers off her back and made the groupies stop cornering her.

Carmilla probably didn’t even want to go to prom.

She’d mentioned it briefly, a stuttering rambled mess as Carmilla had pretended to study in the library but all she’d accomplished was revealing her embarrassing love of cheesy and overdramatic promposals. 

Laura slammed her locker closed, nearly jumping at the sound in the empty changing room. Sighing, she threw her helmet under her arm and jogged onto the field again. Halftime would almost be over and she still needed to convince Carmilla to put her hair in a ponytail for her. For hating cheerleading, Carmilla was at least really good at the mandatory ponytail and Laura was happy to abuse her fake dating privileges. 

She just didn’t know if that extended to prom dates. 

Suddenly she was on the field and every light in the stadium was pointed at her; Laura froze. Terror running through her at the thought that she’d missed the opening snap of the second half.

Then her brain caught up and her eyes went wide. The entire stadium, including all the cheerleaders and Laura’s teammates, were holding signs that had arrows pointing to the center of the field. 

There stood Carmilla with a rose in her hand a sign with a single word, “Prom?”

Carmilla walked towards her and held out the rose, “Cheesy enough for you, cupcake?”

The music pulled through and Laura, memories running through her, could only look around and laugh. Then kiss Carmilla in front of everyone. She could have sworn then entire band started playing.

#

She must have lived a hundred different lives. They were vampires and humans. Fairies and werewolves. Gods and demigods. Dragon riders more than once. Time travelers on occasion. The time they were elves was only pretend. Other times they were fairy tales come to life. Once, Laura was a cupid who fell in love with the girl she was supposed to be helping and cried when she realized that she was supposed to stab herself in the back. 

That they were meant to be together even here.

Sometimes they had magic or cried that they didn’t. Sometimes they had superpowers or cried that they didn’t. Sometimes they could control powers beyond them and cried that they could. 

They got married and broke up. 

They were superspies and FBI agents and hostage negotiators and delinquent teenagers. There were journal entries and waxing philosophical. They were literally stuck together and she’d cried when Elle had managed to rip them apart even then. She was selling Carmilla cookies or stealing her mug through early morning sticky notes. They bonded over kittens and spiders and fish and puppies and bad tattoos.

Once Laura was a musician with a guitar on her knee; another time it was Carmilla who played a piano like she was born to it. Both times, Laura found the same two melodies intertwined through every song. 

Like they could never be truly erased.

She had to rescue Carmilla’s soul from darkness and once had seven different Carmilla’s running around, each one falling in love with her in their own way and yet always in the way that only Carmilla could. 

There were the worlds where she grew old while Carmilla stayed young. Others where she was reborn a hundred times over so Carmilla was doomed to watch her die. Others where they were strangers who fell into each other. Sometimes, Carmilla had her memory erased twice over and had forgotten Laura in every world. 

Once, Laura forgot her too. 

Sometimes they are human. Neighbours shooting potato guns or two girls eating cookies. They built a rocketship and went to space, only coming home when the music finally started to play. They were camp counselors and coffee baristas and roommates and chefs and doctors and hockey players and librarians and lab partners. They were best friends and worst enemies. They were parents. They were girls who fell in love with a single look on the subway and yet walked away. 

Being human didn’t make love any easier. 

Once, Laura gave up her body to a god to save them and Carmilla still refused to let her go. Sometimes Carmilla was a more obvious monster who wanted to drain her dry; other times, Laura was just as monstrous and it was Carmilla keeping her from draining humans dry as her freshly turned body strained to kill.

Carmilla keeping her from making the blow.

There was a world where they shared a heart, golden blood letting them live and die together. 

They danced more times than she could count and kissed less time than she would have liked. Fake dated more times than was probably really healthy. 

Once, hearts followed them around until they acknowledged what the music already knew. Sometimes, they were soulmates and fought against it with all they had.

Sometimes they were soulmates who were drawn together across the centuries to become what the other needed. Imaginations and mirrors unable to hold them apart as they circled each other like two stars that were begging to collide but unsure of how to alter their gravity until both finally gave in.

Once, there were literal stars written on their skin. 

But every time, in every world, they found each other. Time and time again their paths crossed and even though Laura couldn’t remember a drop of their time together, she found reasons to stay in Carmilla’s orbit.

Carmilla found reasons to stay in hers. 

They usually hated each other when it started and yet they always stayed. Each and every time, no matter what the world threw at them, Laura found Carmilla at her side as the music played in her ears. That beautiful and haunting violin filling her up and pulling her guitar along with it. She’d heard every variation of its song. The bare melody to the versions that soared with a hundred extra notes just because they could. The ones that screams of joy and the ones filled with quiet self loathing. 

Laura knew them all like the back of her hand. 

She knew Carmilla, every note and every rest. The plays and the pauses and every variation she had. The full score that made Carmilla everything she was. 

As the next world faded out, black on her vision, Laura sighed and looked up to the void, “I love her too, you know. You’re never going to win.”

#

The world faded back in and Laura’s eyes went wide, surprised to find every one of her memories in place. A hundred worlds and a hundred sets of memories, Carmilla examined from every angle and facet. 

And Laura still loved her. 

She glanced around, searching for the reason she could remember everything. Her knees practically quivered. Was it over? Had they done enough?

Except. She wasn’t in the pit. Instead, Laura recognized the room that had plagued her nightmares. It was brighter than her dreams and there was no blood on the floor but she knew this room from the white fireplace to the kind of ugly wallpaper. 

The knife sitting on the table beside her as she stood facing the window. Frowning, Laura went to grab it.

She couldn’t move. She suddenly realized that she couldn’t even frown. Nothing in her body responding to her thoughts. Just as she started to panic, there was a voice in her head. 

Not in her head, speaking through her mouth.

“You think you’re so clever,” Laura’s heart froze as Elle’s venom leaked out, “So in love. Well, let’s really put that to the final test why don’t we? Would you like to know Carmilla’s greatest nightmare? The one that love can’t save her from because it doesn’t exist?” She extended her arms, “This.”

Elle turned just enough to let Laura see in the nearby mirror and Laura froze.

It wasn’t Elle in her body. She was in Elle’s. Elle’s face staring back at her and that same white dress that haunted her dreams hanging from limbs that weren’t her own.

“See if you can get her to fall in love with you now,” Elle spat the words. 

She turned back to the window just as the door opened and Laura was helpless to do anything as she heard Carmilla practically spill into the room, words already pouring from her mouth about hopeful plans for America and escaping and a future that broke Laura’s heart. Because this was the moment. The moment that Carmilla would break because Elle would turn on her. Call her a monster. 

And Laura couldn’t do anything.

She tried, screaming inside Elle’s head and trying to move a muscle. A leg. An arm. Her mouth. Anything. Nothing moved. 

She was forced to turn when Elle did, venom in her words, “Was any of it real?” Elle’s whisper was a hiss, “Was a single note of it true or did you fake it all?”

“What?” Carmilla stuttered the word, “Elle, what are you talking-”

Elle cut her off, “I met a woman in town today. She was saying some strange things about you.” 

Laura screamed as Carmilla’s face dropped. Fell as she took a step back. Something like fear and hope all tangled up into one mess as she tried to speak and Elle refused to let her. Laura knew that look. That face. 

Carmilla really had loved her. 

And Elle was going to do this to her. Not only in the past but the current Carmilla was somewhere in there too, forced to relive this all over again. As much as Laura tried, she could do nothing when Elle took the knife and sliced hand opened. Carmilla recoiled at the blood, a hand covering her mouth and Laura wanted to grab her. Hold her close and promise her that the fangs didn’t matter. That she didn’t care. 

But Elle did.

Elle who stepped forward with her bloody hand. “Look at me, Carmilla,” Elle demanded, “Why won’t you look at me.”

And Carmilla, Carmilla who was in love, looked up as asked. 

She broke, snapping for just a second as her fangs revealed themselves. If Laura’s heart had broken before, it shattered at the devastated way Carmilla tried to hide them again. Tried to hide a piece of herself. That part of the violin’s melody that was a little minor but played beautifully alongside the original melody, only heightening it further. 

Laura knew. She’d heard it. 

“You’re a -” She felt the words in Elle’s head before they could be uttered and every piece of her shattered heart rebelled. Pushing with everything she had, Laura fought. She fought as hard as she could.

Elle stalled. Stuttered. Her mouth frozen as her eyes went wide and the word refused to fall. They battled, each girl trying to seize back control of the body while Carmilla watched. Eyes wide and hand still held over the offending fangs. 

Laura tried but Elle was stronger. It was her body to begin with and Laura was tired from living a hundred different lives. So she grabbed the only thing she could. The only thing she had left. She latched onto her soul music, pulling it out of her with shaking hands as it slid and groaned at the unfamiliar body. Laura didn’t care. 

Her one shot. She forced it out. Shoved it forward. Sent it flying at Carmilla with everything she had, Carmilla who had never heard her song before. Who couldn’t even hear music.

But maybe. Maybe. It wasn’t that Carmilla couldn’t hear it. 

Maybe no-one had bothered to try before.

Laura stuffed the love of a hundred lives into it and sent it flying. The acoustic guitar poured out of her, the fast notes flying out as though they knew this was the only chance they would get. They had shifted just a little from the song she knew, more depth to each strum and every note seemingly plucked twice over. But it was still hers. Still her soul. 

Everything she was. The good and the bad. The notes and the rests. The chords and the strung together notes that made even a tiny acoustic demand to be heard. 

And Laura demanded. She always demanded. Laura did not back down from a fight. 

She and Elle dropped to their knees and even as Elle tried to spit out the word monster. Laura went for a different phrase entirely. One she’d never gotten to say to her version of Carmilla to the one who died in the pit. As real as all the others. 

She sent the music and hoped. Hoped as Elle grabbed her, winning control and shoving Laura back inside her so that the best Laura could send out was a trickle of sound. The barest melody. The core of who she was. 

“I thought you said your music was an organ.”

Carmilla spoke and they both froze, head turning to look at Carmilla who had dropped to her own knees. Her dressed spilled around her as she grabbed her arms, eyes closed. Fangs peeking over her lips. 

Laura pushed harder, determined to keep the song going as it hit the slow section. The soft piece of herself that were made of delicate fingers on strings and quiet whispers usually lost underneath the loudness. Each note hesitant and careful and so unsure. She sent them to Carmilla.

“This guitar,” Carmilla shook her head, “why do I know this? Why do I hear this? I’m not supposed to be able to hear this.”

Laura kept going, sweeping back into the quick notes but with the music swelling around her. 

Carmilla took a deep breath then froze. Only her head moving. Popping up. Eyes opening. “Laura.”

No question mark. 

Just a Laura had heard Carmilla’s music a hundred times over and woken up every time, Laura could see the memories slip over Carmilla’s face and settle back under her skin. The way she held herself changing in a hundred small ways. She sped across the room, using her speed like the old Carmilla never would have. Touched her face. Looked into her eyes. 

Wonder. 

“I hear you.” Her hands were shaking, “I’ve never heard that song before, your song, but I know it. I hear you.”

Violins slammed though her head like the never had before. An entire symphony welling inside her as each and every version of Carmilla that she’d ever seen played at once, the melody reflected a hundred times over as though an entire orchestra was playing around her. The instruments combined with each other, strengthing the melody while harmonies played around them. Other notes weaving between the pauses and spaces to pull the whole thing together into one cohesive whole. The same person built over 300 years and made of a dozen different names. A thousand different melodies.

All together. One sound. One story.

Carmilla.

“No.” The word spilled from Elle, “No. That can’t be her actual music. It can’t. I heard that. I heard it! I thought it was fake. I thought she was lying. That can’t.”

The music roared through her. The world went black but the music never stopped, followed her through as Laura slipped into skin that felt like her own. She opened her eyes to find the bottom of the pit. Elle nowhere to be seen. She reached for Carmilla; her hand already halfway to her own.

“I love you,” Laura said the words first. Spewing them out like they couldn’t be contained.

Carmilla smiled and pulled her close, “I love you too.”

Laura softly rubbed the dirt off her cheek, “You heard me.”

“You’re beautiful.”

It was hard to focus with Carmilla’s face so close to her own, “Can you hear yourself? You’re an entire symphony now.” The violins were still playing around her, mixing in with the sound of her own guitar. Now free with Elle gone.

“No,” Carmilla’s hand snuck around her back, “But I can hear you.” Her fingers tapped the rhythm onto Laura’s spine. 

Laura’s smile was small, “Well, I’m happy to share.”

Carmilla looked at her and Laura didn’t know what to do with the expression. 

But she knew exactly what to do when Carmilla kissed her – Laura kissed her back. The symphony only grew. Hundred lifetimes. 300 years. It didn’t matter. 

She knew what they sounded like. A violin and a guitar trading notes like they were meant to play off each other, finding the holes left by the other and filling them in. Weaving between melodies to take two complete songs and turn them into something new. Give and take. Pause and play. 

A song that never ends. A song of two girls in love. A symphony worth listening to.

**Author's Note:**

> Cupcakes. I can’t believe that we made it here. 100 stories from the girl who only ever started the first one as a way to say goodbye to writing forever. I’ve been irrevocably changed by this experience and by every one of you. I’ve always believed that things come into our lives exactly when we need them and it’s only looking back that I realize how important this entire experiment turned out to be for me.
> 
> And I can only hope for you.
> 
> Thank you for every ounce of support that you’ve offered to these 100 tales. So much of them has been made of what I learned and heard from each of you. This story ended with a symphony of sound, a hundred different instruments playing all at once and that is what we are. Thousands of voices that created something like I’ve never seen before. I never would have made it this far without you. I wouldn’t be writing a single word of anything without you. You have created the true definition of community.
> 
> So thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for changing my life in a way that I truly believe is for the better.  
> I hope these stories, even a single word of these stories, offered you something in return. That I could offer even an inch of insight or make you smile just a little bit in your day. We have written 100 stories and more than half a million words. That’s nearly two days worth of nonstop reading if you wanted to binge it through without stopping. Cupcakes, I’ll be more elegant when I sleep but thank you. Thank you for reading and writing and kudosing and just generally being so awesome that it leave me bewildering.
> 
> Just thank you.
> 
> As always, you can find me on [ tumblr ](http://ariabauer.tumblr.com/) or [ twitter ](https://twitter.com/ariabauer?lang=en) Survey is now closed. thank you for your feedback.
> 
> Thank you again cupcakes. Thank you for coming on this journey with me. For every story and smile and heartbreak and tear and fluffbucket. I hope they helped you even a fraction as much as you’ve helped me. May you always and forver, stay stupendous. Aria.


End file.
